


it's a bad excuse but it's mine

by firsttraintovictoriaville



Series: Genma Week 2020 [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Drug Addiction, Genma week 2020, M/M, sort of pre-slash but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:08:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25372912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firsttraintovictoriaville/pseuds/firsttraintovictoriaville
Summary: Attending a Narcotics Anonymous meeting would always be a failure for Genma. It didn't matter how nice everyone was or who was there or how clean he had been. It was a club you joined when you had failed so badly that even you couldn't be in denial about it.
Relationships: Shiranui Genma/Umino Iruka
Series: Genma Week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1835740
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16
Collections: GenmaWeekend2020





	it's a bad excuse but it's mine

Sitting down on that chair, in those little neat rows, a cup of warm tea or a cigarette in your hand as you looked around at the acquaintances you’ve known for years or a brand new face, would always feel like shame. It would feel like defeat and disgust and proof that no matter how much anonymity was promised and maintained everyone that was in that room knew you were a fucked up drug addict that could have thrown away everything that you worked for, if you hadn’t already done it. It didn’t matter that everyone else was in the same boat as you, drug addicts were the worst when it came to judging one another. 

Genma removed his senbon from his mouth and held it between his fingertips like it was a cigarette as he took a sip of the plain black tea from a paper cup. Mmm, it had a distinct honey infused flavour to it, Genma looked around and there was the Aburame girl that had been coming to the meetings for as long as he had manning the food and drink table. It must have been her turn to bring the snacks. Genma recalled how much she had loved drugs that made her hyper focused. She had said it last week, when it was her turn to give the big speech that all of the people that had been attending Konoha’s Narcotics Anonymous meetings since it’s founding five years ago, the reason why she didn’t go through with her wedding wasn’t because her would be husband couldn’t handle her drug addiction. It was because she couldn’t handle loving something or someone as much as she did her pills. It was a good speech, Genma would have taken notes if he knew he was up next. 

“Are you ready? Don’t worry about public speaking, just imagine everyone in their underwear. It’s what I tell my students when they have to give presentations.” Iruka smiled at Genma, coming to sit down next to him. Despite the fact, that he had only been clean for a year before the meetings started, Iruka was the leader in spirit of the meetings and if it hadn’t been frowned upon, he would have been named leader in name too. Instead it went to Shizune, who was kindhearted and ran a good meeting but had never done anything that could even be thought about as a narcotic in her life. She always deferred to Iruka when shit got complicated as it was wont to when dealing with drug addicts and Lord Sixth gave his blessing. 

Genma chuckled. “Not really that nervous and how do you know I haven’t already pictured everyone in their underwear? I could be picturing you in your underwear right now.” 

Outside of this meeting space within the Konoha Public Library walls, Iruka would have blushed and sputtered out a nonsense sentence to get away from the situation or have rolled his eyes and made Genma feel like he was lucky that Iruka wasn’t angry as he once had been. 

No, in here Iruka dealt with the darker side of his anger. Because Iruka had never been angry enough to be described as genuinely violent or sent off to an anger management class but he had been angry enough to discover that the best way to numb the pain of anger was to hold a spoon to an open flame. That spoon remained dirty for a long time even after everyone declared Iruka a better person and let him be near their children because he was what everyone wanted a teacher to be like: kind, warm, caring for those that society didn’t want to care for but having that bit of a bad past that allowed him to relate to the kids that didn’t pay attention and bring them onto the right path. 

Drug addiction was only a problem when you couldn’t function the way society wanted you to. If you could be just as good or in the case of Iruka, even better, because of it then why would anyone want you to quit in the first place? 

Genma would admit that he was jealous of Iruka and Aburame-san. They had done drugs for reasons that could be seen as noble. Understandable even. Who would want to walk around with that much anger and confusion in their lives like Iruka had? Who would want to be a victim to familial and societal pressure like Aburame-san?

And why had Genma had begun taking drugs? 

Because he was complacent. Because he was lazy. Because there was nothing else for him to do but take dextromethorphan until he couldn’t remember that he was taking it in the first place. He couldn’t even take codeine to at least be a little bit cool. He walked around with senbon in his mouth, never once fearing what could happen to him if he rolled it around between his teeth a little too carelessly but he had been taken down by the medicine that he bought in mass quantities at the pharmacy. 

It was the senbon that was his salvation. Because of course, the only thing that could make the guy that took legal drugs like they were candy stop doing such was to replace it with a dangerous weapon. Senbon and dextromethorphan were both on the same scale legally but you weren’t supposed to go around with senbon in your mouth at all times. It was common sense but drug addicts were rather infamous for exchanging their common sense for a high. For everyone else but Genma, senbon was the worst thing that they could put in their mouths. 

“Good luck.” Iruka said, patting Genma on the shoulder. 

“It’s my turn already?” Genma asked. He didn’t look confident or cocky like he normally did. There was no reason for him to,what could he possibly hide from the people that knew every sordid detail of him at his worst. 

Genma climbed up the small steps that led to the raised auditorium stage that was used for the speakers of the group meetings. Genma looked up at the faces of his fellow addicts and didn’t feel as nervous as he thought he was going to. He knew for a fact that people paid attention to what the speaker had to say- once you got past school age people paid attention to things like guest speakers and lecturers, after all if you were willingly sitting in that relatively uncomfortable chair then you wanted to hear whatever was going to be said. 

“Hi, I’m Genma and I’m a drug addict. I’ve been clean for a seventeen months.” It was the second best streak that Genma had ever done. Once at the very start of the meetings when he had been so determined by the prospect of never having to let anyone down including himself, he had made it to twenty whole months. “It hasn’t been easy. They tell you that relapsing is part of the journey but they never tell you how awful it’s going to feel. And I don’t know about you guys, but that was the first time that getting high felt awful for me. I know it’s bad etiquette but it’s true, I had all these good reasons for getting high in my head. I’m supposed to protect the Hokage. The Hokage is the strongest person in this village and they need me and a fuckton of other people protecting them so if the Hokage is that shit out of luck then the rest of us are totally fucked. I had to see a lot of carnage and commit a lot of carnage to get to where I am career wise and it’s something that I never really introspected on. I mean we’ve all seen battle and all seen war, it’s what we sign up for when we decide to be ninjas but we’re kids. At nine I didn’t even know what I wanted to eat for dinner, how I was supposed to know that I wanted to fight for the rest of my life. Life’s a lot longer than you think.” 

Maybe he should go to the one on one therapy sessions that were offered free of charge for the NA members. It would have been better than going on a never ending ramble to his acquaintances but Genma, drug addiction or not, was never the kind of man to shy away from what he was thinking. He would occasionally say what he wanted to say in a roundabout way so the person wouldn’t know but he didn’t keep most things locked inside of him. Even his drug addiction was an everyday post-work drinks topic with Ebisu and Raidou. Maybe it was some sort of privilege for drinking cough syrup, it was hell of a lot easier to swallow (hah-hah) than doing heroin. Did Iruka have friends when he was at the worst of his addiction? Iruka deserved friends and a partner. Was it weird to be checking Iruka out in the middle of his life sob story speech? Being sober had too many rules, it was so easy to sweep everything under the “sorry-I’m-a-drug-addict” excuse rug. He focused on Iruka sitting in the audience, right in the front row where he always sat like the teacher he was. 

“And once you realize how long life really is, you start to do weird shit because of it. Like experiment with everything and anything, question everything, and then question nothing. You’re going around searching for something only to end up finding nothing and then having to decide if you’re happy or sad about it. And cough syrup...it numbed all that. It didn’t matter how many of my team died or survived because I was going to be left feeling the same way. Cough syrup was the great equalizer except for when it wasn’t. Along the way it stopped being something I used to help me and started being something I used just because it was there and it’s the laziest excuse in the world but it’s mine.” 

Genma finished off his speech with some mutterings about how his life had gotten better since he had gotten clean and that the best part about getting older was his pension kicking in. Everyone clapped because that was what they were supposed to but Genma knew that they meant it. They all were genuinely proud of each other’s successes and genuinely believed that when they slipped up they would get better again because if they didn’t believe in each other, then who would? 

“Did you picture us all naked?” Iruka asked Genma as the meeting was dismissed and everyone was doing their part in helping clean up the snack table, whether that was recycling empty plastic containers or drinking the last of the tea or eating one more slice of the cake that Aburame-san had made. 

“No, just you.” Genma said with a lazy grin. He felt lighter and better and fuck, he was going to have to sign up for a personal therapy session and then become one of those people in the group meetings that was big on hugging.

Iruka blushed and looked away before facing Genma head on. “You ever been on a sober bowling date?” 

Genma grinned even wider. “No, but there’s a first time for everything.”

**Author's Note:**

> this was such a hot mess thank you so much for making it all the way through.


End file.
